RATIONALE: Drugs used in chemotherapy use different ways to stop tumor cells from dividing so they stop growing or die. It is not yet known which regimen of chemotherapy is more effective for breast cancer.

PURPOSE: Randomized phase III trial to compare the effectiveness of two different regimens of combination chemotherapy in treating women who have stage II or stage IIIA breast cancer that has spread to the lymph nodes.

Further Study Information

OBJECTIVES:

Compare the disease-free survival and overall survival in patients with node-positive or high-risk node-negative operable stage II or IIIA breast cancer treated with docetaxel or paclitaxel after doxorubicin and cyclophosphamide.

Determine whether the weekly administration of paclitaxel or docetaxel for 12 weeks improves disease-free survival and overall survival when compared with the conventional schedule of every 3 weeks for 4 courses after doxorubicin and cyclophosphamide in this patient population.

Compare the toxic effects of docetaxel and paclitaxel when administered weekly for 12 weeks versus every 3 weeks for 4 courses in these patients.

Compare the toxicity of paclitaxel administered every 3 weeks for 4 courses or weekly for 12 weeks to that of docetaxel administered on the same schedules in these patients.

After completion of all chemotherapy, patients with prior segmental mastectomy receive radiotherapy once daily 5 days per week for 5-6 weeks. Patients with prior modified radical mastectomy may receive radiotherapy after chemotherapy completion at the investigator's discretion.

Patients are followed every 3 months for 2 years, every 6 months for 3 years, and then annually thereafter.

PROJECTED ACCRUAL: A total of 5,000 patients will be accrued for this study within 1.27 years.

Note: Information about this trial is from the ClinicalTrials.gov database. The versions designated for health professionals and patients contain
the same text. Minor
changes may be made to the ClinicalTrials.gov record to standardize the names of study sponsors, sites, and
contacts. Cancer.gov only lists sites that are recruiting patients for active trials, whereas ClinicalTrials.gov lists all sites for all trials. Questions and comments regarding the presented information should
be directed to ClinicalTrials.gov.